many a live-coal of inspiration from their flaming altarsthe loved of the Christian, who sees in them the reflection of his Father's glory, the milestones on the path of his Redeemer's departure, and of his return-the loved of all who have eyes to see, understandings to comprehend, and souls to feel their grandeur so unspeakable, their silence so profound, their separation from each other, and from us so entire, their multitude so immense, their lustre so brilliant, their forms so singular, their order so regular, their motions so dignified, so rapid, and so calm. If," says Emerson, "the stars were to appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had thus been shown. But night after night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."

It is singular, that while the theory of the stars has been perpetually changing, the conception of their sublime character has, under every theory, remained nearly the same. While they are believed to be, as in the darker ages, absolutely divine, incorruptible, and perfect in their essence, they were not regarded with more enthusiasm, alluded to with more frequency, or lauded with more eloquence, than now, when we know that imperfection, and inequality, decay, and destruction, snow, and perhaps sin, have found their way thither, as well as here; and Dante, amid his innumerable descriptions of the heavenly bodies-and no poet has so many has said nothing finer in their praise than we find in some of the bursts of Bayly. If science has, with rude hand, torn off from the stars that false lustre of supernaturalism which they bore so long, it has immeasurably multiplied their numbers, unlocked their secrets, at once brought them nearer and thrown them farther off, and supplied the glitter of superstition by the severe light of law. If they seem no longer the thrones of angels, they are at least porch-lamps in the temple of Almighty God. If no longer the regents of human destiny, they are the Urim and Thummim upon the breast of the Ancient of Days. If not now regarded as a part of the highest heaven, they at least light the way that leadeth to honor, glory, and immortality. From sparks they have broadened into suns; from thousands they have mul

tiplied into millions. It is ever thus with the progress of genuine truth. Remorselessly, as it rushes on, it scatters a thousand beautiful dreams, slumbering like morning dewdrops among the branches of the wood, but from the path of its progress there rises, more slowly, a stern, but true and lasting glory, before which, in due time, the former "shall no more be remembered, neither come into mind."

A collection of all the descriptions of the stars, in the poetry and prose of every age, would constitute itself a galaxy. It would include Homer's wondrous one-lined allusions to them-so rapid and so strong, as they shone over Ida, or kept still watch above the solitary Ulysses in his sea-wanderings-the crown they wove over the bare head of the sleepless Prometheus-the glances of power and sympathy which they shed in, through rents in the night of the Grecian tragedies-the ornate and labored pictures of Virgil and Lucretius-the thick imagery they supply to the Scripture bards-their perpetual intermingling with the Divina Comedia, darting down through crevices in the descending circles of damnation, circling the mount of purgatory, and paving the way to the vision of essential Deity-Shakspeare's less frequent but equally beautiful touches-Milton's plaintive, yet serene references to their set glories-Young's bursts of wonder, almost of longing and desire, for those nearer neighbors to the eternal throne, which appeared to him to see so far and to know so muchByron's wild and angry lashing at them, like a sea, seeking to rise, and reach and quench them, on a thousand shipwrecks-Wordsworth's love to them, for loving and resting on his favorite mountains-Bayly's hymnings of devotionChalmers' long-linked swells of pious enthusiasm and last, not least, our author's raptures, more measured, more artistic, but equally sincere.

There occurs a passage in one of Byron's letters, written in Venice, where he describes himself, after a debauch, looking out at the night, when he exclaims, "What nothings we are before these stars!" and adds, that he never sufficiently felt their greatness, till he looked at them through Herschel's telescope, and saw that they were worlds. We rather wonder at this, for we have always thought that, to a highly imaginative mind, it mattered little whether it looked to the stars

through the eye or the telescope. Who does not see and feel that they are worlds, if he has a heart and an imagination, as well as an eye? Who cares for the size of algebraic symbols? A star, at largest, is but a symbol, and the smaller it seems, the more scope it leaves for imagination. The telescope tends rather to crush and overwhelm than to stimulate to fill than to fire-some souls. It necessarily, too, deprives the seeing of the stars, so far as they are regarded individually, of many of its finest accessories. The mountain which the star seems to touch-the tree through which it trembles the soft evening air on which it seems silently to feed the quick contrasts between it and its neighboring orbs--its part as one of a constellated family--such poetical aspects of it are all lost, and the glare of illumination falls upon one vast unit, insulated at once from earth, and from the other parts of heaven. It is as though we should apply a magnifyingglass to a single face in a group of painted figures, thereby enlarging one object at the expense of the others, which are not diminished, but blotted out. While, of course, acknowledging the mighty powers and uses of the telescope, and confessing that from no dream did we ever more reluctantly awake than from one which lately transported us to Parsonstown, and showed us the nebula in Orion just dropping to pieces, like a bright dissolving cloud, yet we venture to assert that many derive as much pleasure and excitement from the crescent moon still as in Shakspeare's time, a silver bow new bent in heaven-from round, shivering Venus in the green west-from the star of Jove suspended high over head, like the apparent king of the sky--and from those glorious jewels, hanging like two pendents, of equal weight and brilliance, from the ear of night, Orion and the Great Bear, as they could from any revelation of the telescope. This very night we saw what probably impressed our imagination as much as a glimpse of the Rossian glories would have done. The night has been dark and drifting till a few minutes ago. We went out to the door of our dwelling, looking for nothing but darkness, when suddenly, as if flashing out through and from the gloom, and meeting us like a gigantic ghost at our very threshold, we were aware of the presence of Orion, and involuntarily shuddered at the sight.

All astronomers of high name have been led at first to

their science by the workings of an enthusiasm as strong as passion and as high as poetry. We cannot doubt that Newton was from his boyhood fascinated by the beauty of the heavenly bodies, and that his wistful boyish glances at their serene splendor and mystic dance formed the germs of his future discoveries. To some Woolsthorpe reverie of twilight, we may trace the fall of the keys of the universe at the feet of his matured manhood! Surely a loftier principle was stirring in him than that which renders the juvenile mechanician uneasy till he has analyzed the construction of a toy. It was not, in the first instance, the mathematical puzzles connected with them that attracted him to those remote regions; but it was their remoteness, magnitude, and mystery, which roused him to grapple with their secrets. Ordinary children love to see, and would like to join, the march of soldiers, as they step stately by. The boy Newton burned to accompany, as an intelligent witness and companion, the steps of planets and suns. This enthusiasm never altogether subsided, as many well-known anecdotes prove. But too soon it ceased to express itself otherwise than by silent study and wonder; it retired deep into the centre of his being, and men, astonished at the lack-lustre look with which the eye of the sage was contemplating the stars, knew not that his spirit was the while gazing at them as with the insatiate glance of an eagle. Thus frequently has it been with astronomers. Their ardor diving beyond human sight or sympathy has failed to attract the minds of others, and by coating itself in the ice of cold formulæ and petrified words, has repelled many a poetical enthusiast, whose imagination was not his only faculty. We look on professor Nichol as an accomplished mediator between the two classes of mind, or, as we have formerly called him, an Aaron to many an ineloquent Moses of astronomy.

How he has preserved his child-like love for his subjectmatter we do not know, but certainly we always feel, when reading him, that we are following the track of suns, burning and beneficent as footsteps of God, and not of "cinders of the element," whirled round in a mere mechanical motion, and chiefly valuable as lively and cheap illustrations of "Euclid's Elements !" It is said that he has sacrificed powers of original discovery to popular effect; but what if this

popular effect, in which so many are now participating, should be to rouse the slumbering energies of still mightier geniuses, and give us a few Newtons, instead of one fully developed Nichol! "Ha! I think there be six Richmonds in the field."

We like next to, and akin to this, in Professor Nichol, his spirit of hope and joy. This, we think, ought to be, but is not always the result of starry contemplations. We quoted before Carlyle's celebrated exclamation, "Ah, it's a sad sight," as he looked up to a sparkling January sky. Whether we join with him in this, or with Emerson in expressions of jubilant praise, may depend partly upon our state of feeling. In certain moods the stars will appear hearths, in others hells. The moon is bayed at not by dogs alone. The evening star awakens the gloomy hour of the misanthrope, and shines the signal to the murderer, as well as lights the lover to his assignation with his mistress, and the poet to his meeting with the muse. It seems now, besides, evident to most, that the universe being made of one material, struggle, uncertainty, woe, and the other evils to which finitude is heir, are, in all probability, extended to its remotest limits, and that thus the stars are no islands of the blest, but, like our own world, stern arenas of contest, of defeat or of victory. Still, there are many reasons why the heavenly bodies should be a permanent spring of cheering, if pensive, thought. There is, first, their unfathomable beauty. Is it nothing to the happiness of man that God has suspended over his head this book of divine pictures, talking to him in their own low but mighty speech, spotting his nights with splendor, and filling his soul with an inspiring influence which no earthly object can communicate? Doubts and difficulties may occupy part of the intervening time, but the first and the last feeling of humanity is, 66 Thanks, endless and boundless, to Heaven for the stars." Secondly, They give us a sense of liberty which no other external cause can do, and which must enhance the happiness of man. This was one great good of the discovery of America. It did not, when found, fulfil the dreams of navigators; it was not a cluster of fortunate isles, filled with happy spirits-the worst passions of man were found among the most beautiful scenery in the world; but its discovery shivered the